Backyard space pioneers will to be aiming for orbit

It's easy to be skeptical of Gary Streeter's plan to put a satellite into space.

After all, he has bought many of his rocket parts at Home Depot. His engine testing ground is the weed-choked yard of a 145-year-old brick home on the edge of downtown. And mission control sits in the backyard, inside a lemon-yellow building the size of a one-car garage with windows covered by colorful curtains of rockets, stars and planets. It's there, in his spare time, where Streeter — amid piles of boxes, furniture and books — tinkers with his plans to launch a satellite on the 40th anniversary next year of the first moon landing.

"A lot of people thought Columbus was nuts," said Streeter, who sees space Brass Fitting Pipe travel and colonization as a certainty. He wants to prove that there's a place in the race for everyone, not just the big boys — NASA, the military, corporations.

"It's viable and doable, and it's time to get in on the ground floor," said Streeter, 48, who has been designing and building rocket engines since the moon shots first captured his imagination as a boy growing up in South Carolina.